This Week in Milwaukee: Sept. 29-Oct. 5

Thursday, Sept. 29
Zoo Brew @ Milwaukee County Zoo, 7 p.m.
Beer tasting events have popped up all over the state over the last decade, but
this one takes place at an especially exciting location: the Milwaukee County
Zoo. This fundraiser for the zoo will feature samples of beers from more than
two dozen breweries—among them 3 Sheeps, Boston Beer Company, New Glarus,
Sprecher, Third Space Brewing and Big Head—as well as food from 20
Milwaukee-area restaurants. Tickets are $50 for Zoological Society members and
$60 for non-members. VIP tickets that allow early, 6 p.m. entry into the event
are available as well, as are discounted designated driver tickets.

Friday, Sept. 30
Branford Marsalis Quartet and Kurt Elling @ Sharon Lynne Wilson Center, 8 p.m.
The brother of one of modern jazz’s other
greats, Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis has carved out a long and
distinguished career for himself while taking risks that many of his peers
shied from. His controversial mid-’90s Buckshot LeFonque project was one of the
era’s most successful attempts to pair jazz and hip-hop. Lately, however, Branford
has been in a more traditional mood. His latest album is 2015’s
self-explanatory Branford Marsalis Quartet:
Coltrane’s A Love Supreme Live in Amsterdam. For this show, his quartet
will be joined by singer Kurt Elling, for a bill that promises favorites from
the American songbook along with original material.

Pokémon Symphonic Evolutions @ The
Riverside Theater, 8 p.m.It’s unlikely you’ll ever see more people playing on their cell phones at a
Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra performance than at this one. In a decision that
you’ve got to imagine caused some grumbling among at least a few of the
symphony’s players, MSO will pay tribute to the resurgent video-game series Pokémon
at this concert, performing new arrangements alongside visuals from Pokémon
video games.

Saturday, Oct. 1
China Lights @ Boerner Botantical Gardens, 5:30 p.m.
Whitnall Park’s Boerner Botanical Gardens will be aglow this month, thanks to
40 large sculptural lantern displays that will be on display for its China Lights
exhibition. More than 30 artists from China will contribute to the exhibit,
which includes beautifully lit flowers, peacocks, cranes, butterflies, a
three-foot baby panda and a nearly 200-foot-long dragon. The festival runs
Tuesday through Sunday, 5:30-10 p.m. through the end of October. Each night at
around 6:15 p.m. there will be a procession to light the displays.

Milwaukee Ukulele Festival @ Sunset
Playhouse, 10 a.m.
It may not be the most common instrument, but each year the ukulele gets its due
at Sunset Playhouse’s annual Milwaukee Ukulele Festival. Once again the
festival is divided into two parts. Beginning at 10 a.m., the venue will host a day of workshops,
demonstrations and vendor displays, then at 7 p.m. the event opens to the
public with a performance featuring talent from the festival. Performers this
year include Bucky Halker, Guy Fiorentini, The Milwaukee Ukulele Club and
Friends, Richard Ash, Lil’ Rev, Spencer & Raines, Seeso, Michael Bootzin
and Danielle Ate the Sandwich.

John Mayall w/ Bill Carter @ Shank Hall,
8 p.m.
John Mayall’s band The Bluesbreakers
claimed some of the greatest blues lineups of all time. At various points in
the late ’60s and early ’70s, the band hosted guitarists including Eric
Clapton, Mick Taylor and Mark-Almond, as well as several members of Fleetwood
Mac. Mayall played on and off again with The Bluesbreakers over the decades,
before putting them on permanent hiatus in 2008 to focus on new material, which
hasn’t disappointed. 2009’s Tough
lived up to its name, with a rocking set that found Mayall doing triple duty on
guitar, harmonica and organ, while the covers of Clifton Chenier and Albert
King classics on 2014’s A Special Life
proved that after all of these years Mayall can still shred with the best of
them.

The Lowest Pair @ The Back Room at
Colectivo, 8 p.m.
The Lowest Pair is the collaboration between two distinctly different
personalities: Olympia’s Kendl Winter (previously a solo artist on K Records)
and Minneapolis banjoist Palmer T. Lee, a veteran of the city’s bluegrass
scene. Together they make rootsy folk music shaded by Winter’s punk background.
This year the duo released two new records, Fern
Girl and Ice Man, a more traditional, acoustic-minded folk album, and Uncertain As It Is Uneven, a fuller,
more exploratory record that takes full advantage of the studio.

Sunday, Oct. 2
Adam Ruins Everything @ Turner Hall Ballroom, 8 p.m.
In American society, there are certain values and notions that we hold dear.
Comedian Adam Conover sets out to debunk many of them in his truTV program
“Adam Ruins Everything,” which offers a “Penn & Teller: Bullshit!”-esque
reality check on subjects that most people would never think to question. In
its first season, the show argued that freelancing is illegal; that tipping in
restaurants should be abolished; contended that summer vacations are bad for
kids; questioned the legitimacy of American elections; and maintained that,
despite its stigma, herpes really isn’t all that bad. It should be interesting
to see which conventional wisdom Conover sets out to upend at this live
appearance.

Tuesday, Oct. 4
Ziggy Marley @ The Pabst Theater, 8 p.m.
From his days fronting The Melody Makers, a reggae group he formed with three
of his siblings and which found success in the late 1980s, Ziggy Marley has
continued his family’s musical legacy. He has performed as a solo act for more
than a decade, releasing six albums, including 2006’s Grammy-winning Love is My Religion. Always open to
experimenting with the conventions of reggae music, Marley uses the swaying
rhythms of reggae as the bedrock of his sound while variously incorporating
elements of pop, hip-hop and funk.

Wednesday, Oct. 5
Carrie Underwood w/ Easton Corbin and The Swon Brothers @ BMO Harris Bradley Center,
7 p.m.
The most successful and enduringly popular of all “American Idol” winners,
Carrie Underwood took a little time off after her blockbuster fourth album Blown Away after becoming pregnant with
her first child. Last fall she followed up with album number five, Storyteller, which, true to its title,
features a series of narrative songs—though, as always, the focus is primarily
on Underwood’s massive voice. The country singer’s tour behind the album makes
its way to Milwaukee this week, and if it’s anything like recent stops on the
tour, it’ll feature lots of emotional ballads, a knockout Dolly Parton cover
and at least one costume change.

Glass Animals w/ Pumarosa @ The
Riverside Theater, 8 p.m.For proof of how far rock has broadened its horizons in recent years, look
no further than Glass Animals. The English group is nominally a rock band, and
have experienced most of their success on rock charts, but their music is far
more expansive than the usual drums/bass/guitars that once defined that term. Their
debut album Zaba paired hip-hop and
trip-hop beats and provocative electronic atmospherics; some songs even touched
on contemporary R&B. That fusion of genres sounds even more fluid on the
group’s new sophomore outing How To Be a Human Being.